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Can you say ‘Medical Bankrupcy’?

April 23, 2008 — sfloch

The health system here in the U.S. does everything but make me feel warm and fuzzy inside. Working at a Real Estate office and running new tenant applications, I’m seeing some cases that really makes me go WTF? on occasion. “Medical Bancrupcy” is the term for some of those cases and looking at how the system here works, I don’t wonder why.

If you take me and Stephen for example, married, no kids, in our early twenties. All nice and good, but there are a couple of problems:

1.) I’m lucky to be insured at all because Stephen’s insurance covers me (for about $400 per month total). If I was on my own, it would be a whole different deal, because I’ve had two thromboses (a blood clot in the leg, something that usually only old or immobile people get, at 17, respective 19 when it hit the second time I qualified for neither of those cases, ergo: must be a genetical thing. Nobody know. Great, huh?) Anyway, running the risk of getting a random blood clot which can get you an embolia and death in the worst case, seems to make me a risk patient so most insurances won’t cover me. Peachy. They don’t really care that I’m taking blood thinners every day (which by the way fucks up your immune system really good too) to prevent me from getting a random thrombosis. They just won’t take me.

2.) Then there’s the problem of our insurance utterly failing at getting things done. They take ages to process things and then randomly take either me or Stephen off the insurance plan because -and here’s the kicker- they get confused with our names. Stephen’s is pronounced “Stephan” and my first name’s Stephanie, so they automatically assume that this must be one and the same person on the plan, named Stephan Lee or Stephanie Lee. Could I just point out: You’re WRONG guys? Btw I now have my own Social Security Number so they can’t bitch about the fact that they only have one number listed in their records. Pain…

3.) We get random bills about payments we’re supposed to make for doctor visits that the insurance actually covers. This went on for over three months until they finally figured out that they made a mistake by not registering us right at the doctors office. Great. Thanks for all the stress guys.

4.) I’m still waiting on getting my birth control prescription approved. Our insurance doesn’t cover maternity, ergo it also doesn’t cover birth control (don’t ask me how this is supposed to make sense…). I’ve been working on getting a prior authorization for a month now and it’s still stuck in the mills of bureaucracy.

5.) Kids in general are an issue here. I’m not just talking about Stephen and me here (seriously, I’m not really planning on kids anytime soon, if ever, high thrombosis risk might cancel that out per se anyway). But in general, looking at the fact that most insurances just don’t frigging cover maternity AT ALL, I’m really wondering how the fuck can Americans afford to have so many children? Most insurances don’t even kick in before a deductible of at least $5,000. So I’m really wondering when I’m seeing all those huge families in Utah: How did you do it? How many loans do you still have running for each of your kids? All that and the fact that I’m personally totally incompatible with the idea of an American Mom, makes me come to one conclusion: no kids for me. Thanks.